Women's Squash

This Sunday, Penn gymnastics will face Temple, Bridgeport, and Ursinus in a home meet at the Palestra. It’s the Quakers' senior meet, so the team will honor the contributions of the team’s seniors in a pre-meet ceremony.

The women's squad held its own against a solid lineup of teams. The Quakers finished the weekend with a record of 3-2, with the two losses against No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 5 Ohio State. On the men's side, the Quakers didn’t fare as well, finishing the weekend 2-3, with losing bouts coming to the hands of the No. 1 Notre Dame, No. 2 Ohio State, and No. 10 Stanford.

The Quakers won twice this weekend by sticking to the gameplan that has worked so well for them in recent years: stingy defense and balanced offense. Penn dominated Brown, 88-55, on Friday, and dispatched Yale the next day, 69-54.

It’s an all-Ivy rematch, and it will be a tight one. This Saturday, Penn gymnastics will travel to Ithaca, N.Y. to take on defending Ivy League champion Cornell, a side it faced only three weeks ago in the season-opening Lindsey Ferris Invitational.

This year, the goal of two Ivy Championships is very much in reach. With only a week and a half until championship weekend, both the men and the women fencers are confident they can pull off the double.

It has been five years since 2014 graduate Michael Mills won the men’s sabre competition at the NCAA Fencing Championships. And, five years later, the next chance to carry out Mills’ legacy may be his own cousin.

Three-for-one deals are never bad. That is what fencing fans get whenever they watch a match. Though a first time watcher or casual fan may have trouble noticing the differences, fencing’s three forms — sabre, epee, and foil — are all very nuanced.

Coach Slava Danilov, assistant coach for the men’s and women’s fencing teams, provides a unique spark to the program. Danilov, now in his fourth year with the Quakers, is part of an excellent staff that includes head coach Andy Ma and other assistants Adi Nott and Randall LeMaster. Men’s senior epee and captain Zsombor Garzo described Danilov in one phrase. “Extremely competitive.”

A sense of community, strong brotherhood and sisterhood, and the pride that comes with being a part of something bigger than yourself are all reasons students join groups at Penn. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that student-athletes highlight these reasons to not only justify their involvement with sports, but also their involvement with Greek life.